Finding pride in adversityBy Phillip W. Lamb editor@couriernews.com A warning bell rings, pneumatic switches are thrown, and cylinders on the press begin to roll. That's when the real noise begins. By the time a Goss Urbanite press is up to speed, a person standing eight feet away can feel the rumbling in the soles of his feet. If that person is a longtime newspaperman, the rumbling reaches all the way into the heart, carried there by the printer's ink that we like to ...

Movie fare rising a bitBy Phillip W. Lamb editor@couriernews.com It doesn't seem so long ago that the comment, "I don't know, what do you want to do?" would be followed by a futile search of the movie listings, then a return to the endless cycle of what-to-do questions. Maybe it was 15 to 18 years ago, back when the kids were younger. I can clearly remember being frustrated with the choices available at the movie theaters where we lived then, because it seemed there...

State plays role in bookIf anyone asked Bill Clinton over the last two or three years how the writing of his memoirs was coming, he'd exult and say "great." Reports were that frequently he'd call people and read his just-completed passages proudly, asking the ever-leading question, "Isn't that good?" People who have written books, especially autobiographies, can tell you that Clinton's buoyancy was not a positive sign. They can tell you that it probably indicated he ...

High Court finally blinksIn the 19-month-long stare-down over school funding, consolidation and the constitution, it was the Arkansas Supreme Court that finally blinked. The 4-3 decision announced Friday was hailed by some as a victory for the separation of powers, but in fact it is an unconditional surrender of power by the court. By abandoning the case, the court turned interpretation of the state constitution over to the legislative branch, which has shown for 130 ...

Baptists, stay in schoolsBy Phillip W. Lamb editor@couriernews.com Delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention took an important step in the final day of their meeting this week by turning back a proposal to call for Baptist parents to pull their children out of public schools. By rejecting this idea, they affirmed the importance of a free public education and recognized the role of parents in making the decisions about their children's education. The two key propone...

Congrats, Corliss; you earned itBy Sean Ingram judicial@couriernews.com A decade ago, it was hard to find an Arkansan who wasn't still in Hog Heaven after the University of Arkansas Razorbacks - including Russellville native Corliss Williamson - beat the Duke Blue Devils to win the 1994 NCAA National Championship. Has it really been 10 years? No matter, because Tuesday night, the Big Nasty became a champion once again as the Detroit Pistons claimed the NBA championship by ma...

BMI report benefits allWhen the Arkansas Legislature approved the measure requiring schools to record and report a measure of obesity of schoolchildren in the state, we were skeptical about whether parents really needed someone else to tell them their children were on the hefty side. We're still skeptical about that, but the law of unintendended consequences has finally produced one of its rare positive results. The data gathered by schools have proven beneficial no...

Clinton critic now reticentCount Cliff Jackson out of the hordes that will view a documentary that purports to chronicle a vast right-wing conspiracy to keep, or kick, Bill Clinton out of the White House. The Hot Springs lawyer who was one of the first of Clinton's antagonists to go public with allegations about Clinton's sexual past shrank repentingly from the limelight years ago and now says he doesn't care to be associated with either extreme - Clinton bashing or Cli...

Tortured logic falters"Situational ethics" was a bad-boy buzz phrase a few years back. It refers to the idea that ethical behavior depends on the situation and that there are no absolute values that must be followed. This idea, and the liberals and moderates accused of espousing it, were all pretty much tarred and feathered years ago. Now the idea has cropped up again, and in the unlikeliest of places. Some person or persons in the Bush administration have breathed...

Go beyond the gray boxMany Russellville residents are happy about Wal-Mart's plans for building a 203,000-square-foot Supercenter at East Main Street and Weir Road. We'd be even happier to see city officials urge the retailing giant to go beyond its standard blue-and-gray box. You've seen those behemoths elsewhere in Arkansas, such as in Conway and the slightly smaller behemoth Supercenter that opened last year in Clarksville. They're unmistakably Wal-Marts, all ri...

Stamp out park smokeThere was once a time when cigarette smoke was everywhere. The "smoke-filled room" of political lore was just another spot where smoke was a common haze that filled the area. Offices, workplaces, theaters, even meetings of the board of trustees out at Arkansas Tech were still filled with ashtrays, cigarette butts and smoke for decades after the Surgeon General's warning about the dangers of smoking. For decades, non-smokers just accepted the i...

Old fears prove unfoundedBy Phillip W. Lamb editor@couriernews.com Newspaper opinion writers have a natural aversion against admitting a mistake, so readers should enjoy the rare occasions when one of us makes such a concession. It is with an unusual sort of satisfaction that I concede to being wrong about Ronald Reagan. Back in my early days, when Reagan was just an ex-governor and an ex-movie actor, I had some heartfelt concerns about where this man might take us as...

Schools set for changesSchool's out, but superintendents Roger Oge and Jerry Moore were hard at work Friday preparing their districts for changes to come. Both gave their full attention to the task at hand: combining budgets, planning salaries, personnel policies, bus routes - the mechanics of merging their districts with larger ones for the fall. But in the back of Moore's mind is the hope that a lawsuit that his Sparkman district joined will make it all for nothin...

DWI appeals leave a puzzlePeople who drink to excess and then get behind the wheel have broken the law and violated the trust that society gives to motorists. Legislators, police and prosecutors should all be on the same side, working together to see that people who break those laws are punished. Throwing in the towel after winning the first round doesn't make much sense, but that appears to be what has happened in a number of alcohol-related cases in Russellville Dist...

ACLU fights for baptismThe late Grady Nutt was actually something of a nut, but in a nice sort of way. He was a Southern Baptist minister and also a fine humorist who led his flock with laughter. Nutt delighted in poking fun at Christians, their differences and, more importantly, their similarities. Next to Baptists, his favorite targets were Methodists, but that was mainly because the neighboring Methodist Church let out 10 minutes early on Sundays so they could ma...

Optimism still justifiedBeing an optimist at heart means that sometimes you are proven wrong. That's OK; it is still preferable to being a pessimist who's always right. The pessimistic side creeps to the forefront sometimes. Perhaps, we all live on a continuum that places us somewhere between a cheerful Pollyanna and a gloomy Eeyore. Taking a car trip, whether into or across Russellville or all the way to Chicago, provides some justification for optimism about the ec...

Honoring our fallenFor a nation that values peace, America certainly has a violent history. Many of our defining moments have involved warfare. The Revolution gave us our independence. The Civil War decided two key issues: We are one nation, and we reject human bondage. In World War I, we established ourselves as the equal to the European powers. In World War II, we defeated fascism. After the war, we sowed democracy and have reaped allies. Vietnam, for good or ...

The birds are backBy Phillip W. Lamb editor@couriernews.com Making a bluebird box is a classic project for vacation Bible school or Scouting. Six pieces of wood, straight cuts, nothing fancy, a few wood screws, a 1 1/2-inch hole for entry, and the kids are pretty much done. Painting is optional. When a pair of bluebirds showed up on the family farm back in the late 1960s or early 1970s, my dad took an even simpler approach • an empty Hershey's chocolate mix can...

About guns, God and Mark PryorIn a remarkable speech in October, which I missed at the time but the transcript of which I recently ran across, U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor told a "Guns, God and Guts" conference that a Democrat can compete in the South if he's gun-loving and deeply religious. More to the point, Pryor said a candidate needs to be showy about both because "silence is not golden ... silence is an admission of guilt." To what charge? Well, there are two, apparently. On...

Tech tuition's bite deepensArkansas Tech University has squeezed all the blood that it can out of the turnip of state funding for higher education. Now the students have to bleed a little more. Next fall, students will begin paying more in tuition and mandatory fees. A student taking a load of 12 credit hours will pay about 11 percent more each semester, while a student taking a more typical 15 hours will pay almost 17 percent more. In essence, Tech and its students are...